This high-quality companion book to the award-winning documentary AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda features the entire screenplay interwoven with over 400 striking color images, including a considerable collection of rare archival photos of Paramahansa Yogananda, author of the best-selling spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi. The film was produced by CounterPoint Films with cooperation from Self-Realization Fellowship, the society that Yogananda founded in 1920 to carry on his spiritual and humanitarian work.

The companion book presents a visual feast, taking the reader from holy pilgrimages in India to Harvard's Divinity School and its cutting-edge physics labs, from the Center for Science and Spirituality at the University of Pennsylvania to the Chopra Center in Carlsbad, California. Included are insights and commentary from filmmakers Paola di Florio, Lisa Leeman and Peter Rader, as well as interviews with Krishna Das, George Harrison, Ravi Shankar and many others.

The companion book also includes:

- a fascinating account by the filmmakers describing the making of the film

- behind-the-scenes images

- additional material from the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda not included in the film

- insights on the history of yoga, with sidebars on Swami Vivekananda, Patanjali's Eightfold Path of Yoga, and the use of yoga principles by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda is an unconventional biography about Paramahansa Yogananda, widely considered the Yoga master who brought Yoga and meditation to the West in the 1920s. Yogananda made ancient Vedic teachings accessible to a modern audience, attracting many followers and inspiring the millions who practice Yoga today. AWAKE examines the world of Yoga, modern and ancient, east and west, scientific and spiritual and explores why millions today have turned their attention inwards, bucking the limitations of the material world in pursuit of Self-realization.

About the Authors:

PAOLA DI FLORIO

Paola di Florio, co-director, AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda, is an award-winning, Oscar-nominated filmmaker and television producer whose work has featured extraordinary individuals and the triumph of the human spirit. Among her other films are Speaking in Strings and Home of the Brave. Her television work includes producing a TV series for Canal Plus entitled Directors on Directors. She is also a founding partner of Nerd Girls, Inc., a New Media startup dedicated to creating new role models and empowering young women to enter the fields of science and engineering.

LISA LEEMAN

Lisa Leeman, co-director, AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda, has directed, written and produced documentaries for the last 25 years, including One Lucky Elephant, Out of Faith, and Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa. Her groundbreaking first film, Metamorphosis: Man into Woman, won the Filmmaker’s Trophy at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival. Other honors include an Emmy nomination and the once-in-a-lifetime American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Grant. She’s on the faculty of USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.